Wanna go for a ride?
by HelveticaBrown
Summary: Emma always works on Valentine's Day and tonight's no different. But when she responds to a call about a disturbance, her evening takes an unexpected turn.


_A/N: I don't do V-day, but for some reason this idea wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it. It's pretty rough and I don't really have the time to spend to make it prettier, but maybe a few of you will enjoy it anyway._

* * *

Emma parked the cruiser in the rest stop near the lookout. A call had come in half an hour ago about strange lights up on the cliffs. She looked over at the black Mercedes she'd parked next to; the mystery was solved and she probably could have turned around and continued with her patrol. She didn't, though. A mix of curiosity, concern and perhaps a little of something she didn't quite care to examine kept her from leaving. She shut off the engine and made her way carefully towards the spot where Regina was repeatedly conjuring and blowing things up with rhythmic intensity.

"Regina…"

Regina turned sharply to face her, fireball in hand, and there was a moment where Emma thought she might throw it at her. Instead, she tossed the fireball from hand to hand. Emma relaxed slightly, but she watched Regina closely, still cautious. There was something in Regina's eyes that scared her, a kind of chaos that belied the apparent firm control she had over her magic.

"Regina, your little magic show is scaring the peasants. They think there's some kind of cult or something."

"Let them be scared."

"You know I can't." Emma shook her head. "What's going on, Regina?"

There was no response. Regina just stared intently at the series of fireballs she was conjuring and extinguishing, conjuring and extinguishing.

Emma noticed her shiver. It was a cool night and Regina was wearing little more than an evening dress and a thin wrap. To Emma's eyes, Regina looked absolutely stunning, and very, very cold.

Emma took off her jacket and held it out to Regina. She looked at the jacket with disdain for a moment and Emma could see the refusal forming on her lips. A particularly icy gust of wind tore across the clifftop a moment later and Regina snatched the jacket from Emma, glaring as she wrapped it around herself.

"You can go now, Sheriff. I promise I'll behave."

Emma wracked her brain for an excuse to stay with Regina. Somehow, she didn't like the idea of leaving her to be alone again. Not tonight. Not when she was in a mood like this.

"Why don't you come on a ridealong with me? Politicians love those, right?"

The look Regina gave her was scathing. "The whole point a ridealong is to be seen. And unless your camera crew is invisible, I wouldn't be getting much publicity out of it. Besides, it's not an election year."

"I guess so." Plan A having been shot down, Emma decided to try a different tactic. "Surely you can't resist the opportunity to gather first-hand evidence on what a terrible Sheriff I am?"

Emma didn't think she was going to take the bait, but a moment later Regina rolled her eyes and said, "You're not _that_ bad. But maybe it wouldn't be such a terrible idea for me to audit your law enforcement approach a little more directly."

* * *

"So this is what you do all night? You just drive around looking for trouble?"

The question took Emma by surprise. They'd been driving around for half an hour and Regina had cut off every previous attempt at conversation.

"Yeah. I mean, tonight will be pretty quiet, for the first few hours at least, but it'll get messier later on. Valentine's Day brings out the best in some people and the worst in others. There'll be a few trouble spots I'll hit up later on and I'll probably get a few domestic disturbance calls."

"Do you get ever get bored?"

"Sometimes. I'm pretty used to my own company, though."

The conversation lapsed again. Then, "I would have thought you'd be spending Valentine's Day with your pirate," Regina said, with obvious distaste.

"He's not _my_ pirate and thankfully, he's finally got that message. Right now, he's probably buying some company for the evening." Emma pulled a face. "Apparently there's a two-for-one special tonight at Old Mother Hubbard's Dog and Bone."

"Pirate aside, you're the Sheriff. You could have scheduled any one of your deputies to work tonight."

Emma shrugged. "I've got no plans tonight and they all had dates to the Valentine's gala ball." She glanced over at Regina. "The ball that I'm pretty sure you're supposed to be at, based on the outfit you're wearing."

"And that kind of detective work is why you're Sheriff." There was no real bite in Regina's tone and a moment later, she shrugged and said, "I took care of official proceedings and then I left. It's not like I had any particular reason to stay."

"Do you miss him?" Regina hadn't talked about Robin in a while and Emma hadn't asked. Truth was, she didn't want to hear about Robin, hated hearing about him. But tonight, with Regina looking so strange and so hurt, she was willing to try to put aside that dislike and listen to whatever she had to say.

When she looked over at Regina, her lips were pressed together in a firm straight line and her fists were knotted in the fabric of the police jacket she was still wearing.

"Sorry. You don't have to answer that." Emma was annoyed with herself; she'd just got Regina talking and now she was shutting down again. She changed the topic. "You know, there's a flask of coffee under your seat and some snacks in the glovebox if you want."

Regina fished out the flask of coffee, still quiet, and Emma babbled nervously, trying to fill that silence. "I'm sorry, I've only got one cup. But it's clean. I haven't used it."

Regina poured some coffee into the cup and Emma watched her wrap her fingers around it, close her eyes, inhale, before drinking.

"This coffee is terrible."

Emma accepted the cup when Regina handed it to her. She looked at the faint lipstick print on the rim of the cup and thought about touching her lips to that spot, drinking from where Regina had drunk a moment ago. That would probably be as close as she'd ever come to kissing Regina. She thought about it, but she didn't. She carefully spun the cup around and sipped from the other side, before handing it back to Regina.

"I know. It magically starts to taste better sometime around 2am when all you want to do is crawl into bed."

The only response was a laugh and Emma felt ridiculously proud that she'd managed to elicit one laugh at least.

The next time Regina handed the cup to her, Emma couldn't help but notice the matching lipstick print exactly opposite the first. They passed the cup back and forth for a little while and to Emma, at least, it felt strangely comfortable. Intimate, even.

"In answer to your question before… Not as much as I thought I would," Regina said softly. "Not at all really." She turned to Emma. "I think it was just nice to have _someone_ after so long and I made it into more than it was."

"I know what you mean. About it just being nice to have someone."

"It's taken me a long time to realise that I don't _need_ to be with someone to be happy, but…" Regina trailed off.

"It's okay to want to love and be loved."

Emma reached out, her hand tentative as it covered Regina's. Regina looked at her with eyes that suddenly seemed liquid, darker somehow and Emma wondered what she was thinking.

A call about a disturbance came in, interrupting the moment. Regina pulled her hand away.

* * *

"It was a raccoon." Emma got back into the car.

"Did you throw the book at him? Write him up for disturbing the peace?"

Emma rolled her eyes. "I chased him away."

"You let him go? You missed out on an opportunity to improve your terrible arrest statistics?" Regina shook her head disapprovingly. "You'll never get re-elected at this rate."

"I'm gonna need all the room I can get in the cells tonight. Last year it was a full house and then some."

Emma put the cruiser into drive, pulling out from the kerb. She wasn't sure where this sudden change in Regina's mood had come from.

A moment later, Regina said, "Emma, why aren't you with someone tonight? I'm sure you had offers." The mocking tone was gone from her voice and Emma was starting to feel like she couldn't quite keep up.

"I did." She shrugged. "Valentine's Day's kind of stupid. It's just an excuse to sell cards and candy and make people feel shitty about being single. So I work every year. Leave it to the people who like that kind of stuff."

"And you've always felt that way?" Emma squirmed a little at the intensity of Regina's sudden focus.

"No," she finally admitted. "The last Valentine's Day I spent with someone I wasn't even old enough to vote. It was before prison, before Henry, before everything. We sat in a park drinking cheap beer and eating chips we'd stolen from a convenience store and it wasn't fancy, but it was one of the very few perfect moments I'd ever experienced. The next year, I was in prison and it was suddenly a not-so-perfect memory."

"Do you miss him?" Regina asked, echoing Emma's earlier words.

"I do. But not like that. After everything, we'd just started to find a way to be friends." Emma smiled a little wistfully. She changed the subject; she didn't want to talk about this right now. "You know, it's getting late and I should get you back. Do you want me to take you home, or back up to pick up your car?"

"I should pick up my car, just in case Henry needs a ride home from his date with Paige." She smiled. "He looked really handsome tonight."

Emma returned her smile, and they shared a moment, two proud parents. "I wish I could have seen him."

The drive back up to the cliffs was mostly quiet and when they arrived, Emma waited for Regina to get out of the car, expecting her to want to leave as soon as she could.

Emma was surprised when Regina made no move to leave. Instead she turned and regarded Emma steadily. "Emma, is there someone you would have said yes to if they'd asked?"

She didn't answer for the longest time. She just looked at Regina and thought about all the things she wanted to say, all the things she was too afraid to say. Finally, she said, "There is."

"Well, he's a fool for not asking, then."

Emma shook her head, a smile curving her lips. " _She_ doesn't know." She wasn't sure what had come over her; she hadn't intended to let that particular truth slip.

"Oh."

Emma fidgeted with the steering wheel cover as she tried to read Regina's expression. There was a frown marring Regina's brow and Emma felt suddenly nervous.

"Emma, I've been alive seventy years and I've never had a chance to spend Valentine's Day, or the Enchanted Forest equivalent, with someone I would have chosen."

"Well, I'm sorry this year couldn't be the one to break that streak." Emma looked at her watch. "There's still a couple of hours left… you could always try your luck at singles night at the Rabbit Hole."

Regina was silent for a moment. Then, "I think that maybe this year I did. Break that streak, I mean."

It took a moment for her words to register and Emma had to run them through her head a couple more times, trying to gauge whether she was understanding them correctly. She looked at Regina, uncertain, and was met with the same uncertainty in Regina's eyes.

"You mean…" She couldn't quite finish the thought. Her heart was suddenly pounding and it seemed like the blood rushing through her arteries was all she could hear.

Regina nodded.

"Oh." The rush of thoughts hitting her at this unexpected confirmation was overwhelming and she tried to calm her mind enough to hold onto just one train of thought.

And then, she couldn't think of very much at all other than the softness of Regina's lips against her own and the silk of her hair as she ran fingers through it and the sound that Regina made, deep in her throat, when Emma deepened the kiss.

Emma wanted to be closer, but the tight quarters of the cruiser made it difficult and as she leaned further over the centre console, she knocked the switch for the siren. She pulled back with a sigh, shutting off the siren.

She chuckled ruefully as she leaned back in her seat, looking up at the ceiling of the cruiser, the ridiculousness of the moment striking her. "Wanna be my Valentine?"

When she looked over, Regina was smiling, her hair adorably mussed. The sight took Emma's breath away. She was wrong. It was perfect. This moment was perfect.

"How could I turn down an offer like that? Happy Valentine's Day, Emma," Regina said, her eyes soft, crinkling at the edges. She reached over and took Emma's hand and they sat there like that for a moment lost in each other's eyes, just smiling, smiling like nothing else mattered.

And then Regina's smile turned mischievous. "Just so you know, one of your deputies is definitely working next year."


End file.
